SUBJECT LINE: Your Skirts Too Short!…
“What!”
“Your skirts too short!” …I said slowly so he would understand it better.
It didn’t help.
What I had said was out of the blue and my poor client wasn’t following me. So I needed to back track.
“You know how you want to tell everyone, everything in your Sales Letter? Well, you’re giving too much away! The reader will think they have received all you have to give and won’t go any further with you.” I said and then continued…
“I like to think that great copy is like a skirt… short enough to get interest and long enough to keep the curiosity! You don’t want to give everything away for free do you?”
Laughter boomed down the phone… the penny had dropped! (Perhaps I should have said that first!)
“Well, now you put it that way! I can see it is kind of short!” he said.
That simple phrase then formed the base of our communications. The Sales Letter is now affectionately known as “The Skirt.”
Now, I stole and adjusted the phrase from Clayton Makepeace who said… “Copy is like a skirt, it should be short enough to keep it interesting but long enough to cover the subject.” It’s clever and it works.
But, truth be known (Shhhhh!), in the heat of the conversation and on the fly… I kind of mucked up the quote… but luckily… it still worked like a charm!
Sometimes we can spend ages trying to work out creative ways to describe things to people… and the perfect term is sitting right in front of us.
And the problem is, we are told by writing gurus and so called experts that we shouldn’t use clichés because they are as common as the nose on your face… and at the end of the day, they’re over used.
In some types of writing this is true, however in copywriting, people have made a killing by including a well-placed cliché, simile, metaphor or analogy.
I was on a call with Clayton Makepeace recently and he dissected one of his current promotions. (So far it has made around $15 Million.) He shared insights into how he chose the phrases and words he used.
As he was reading through, he came across a cliché. He explained how he could have used 2 paragraphs worth of words to explain what he meant… or just one simple sentence that is commonly known and used by his reader.
And I guess that’s the point… the reader knew what it meant. So it worked.
This gets back to the sage advice Robert Collier gave us when he said, we need to enter the conversation already happening inside the readers/ markets head.
By using phrases that make the reader think or even worse confuse them, you are taking them away from your copy.
Recently I was looking for a phrase to visually paint the idea of something going away quickly. So I played with a host of word combinations, but the copy section was way too long and complicated considering the simplicity of what I wanted to describe.
Originally, I thought… “It’s gone faster than a $50 note dropped at a Kleptomaniac Convention!” which was funny but not everyone knows what a kleptomaniac is… so I’d be making the person think or research what I had just said. (And as shocking as it is to me… not everyone “gets” my humour.)
What to do? What to do!
I know! I’ll check out…
Knowledge Nugget #41 – Use Phrases And Imagery
Your Reader/Market Understand
When you talk to your friends and family, do you ever use clichés? Do you use similes, metaphors and analogies?
I know I do! I’m always exploring easier ways to get my point across.
It’s fun and it keeps people interested… including myself!
We are told to write in a conversational way but then we are loaded up with a bunch of rules that neuter us.
So my take on it is… rules ARE meant to be broken!
When you write, write as though you are having a personal conversation with one person.
Use the language they are used to…
“Enter the conversation in their head by using the language they are using” (Robert Collier and Pauline Longdon.)
Look at forums, look at social media and see what words and phrases people are currently using… and then use them in your copy and marketing.
Now back to my Sales Letter dilemma… how do I describe something disappearing fast?
…I could use a snowflake melting in the hot sun… but I’m writing for an Australian market and we don’t get much snow Down Under. (Besides, that is used way too much!)
…I could have used any number of clichés, but the key to using them is… they need to be relevant to the reader.
So, a bit more brainpower was needed.
In Australia, we have birds called sea gulls and we all know what they are.
I know they are in other countries, but I’m unsure of their behavior. (I heard a sea gull on the Santa Monica pier and it sounded like an Australian crow! It could have been it’s accent, I’m not sure!) So I can’t say they act the same as our birds.
Our Australian sea gulls have a voracious appetite for chips (not the crisps type… more like fries) and if you drop a chip near them… it disappears so fast it makes you wonder if you dropped anything at all. The only evidence will be the greasiness left on your fingers.
(There is a well-known joke… What do Sea Gulls taste like? …Chips! Hahaha!)
Anyway… I found the subject for my phrase but then it needed a location. So I added a very well known one.
So here is my copy chunk…
“Unsurprisingly, when people are offered the same opportunities as wealthy people… their concerns about fairness disappear faster than a chip dropped in front of a flock of seagulls at Bondi Beach!”
Now I’m not saying this is the best copy in the world, but I know it will connect nicely with the Sydney based people reading it.
There’s also a psychology behind using it, because it also shows the reader (without making it obvious) that the “author” of the sales letter is a local, just like them.
These little details are a great way to deepen the connection your copy has with the reader.
So what kind of phrases can you use in your copy/marketing to connect with your reader?
Remember, there are different types of writing and what is gospel or law in one area (novel writing) does not necessarily apply to all.
And if you doubt using clichés in your copy or breaking the rules is a good thing… Clayton Makepeace showed me recently that there are 15 Million very good reasons why you should!
So get creative, stay relevant and most of all… have fun.
Until next week… be safe, take care and don’t neuter yourself 🙂
Cheers,
Pauline xxx
Pauline Longdon
a.k.a. “The Copy Alchemist”
P.S. You don’t want you clichés to be corny though. Remember last week when I spoke about the “reader eye roll!” …Well, you don’t want that kind of response from the reader.
P.P.S. Oh, and make sure you get the clichés right. Years ago there was a politician (Sir Joh Bjelke Petersen) in Queensland who would mix up two or more clichés into one sentence. They never made sense and although he was well liked in his local area, the rest of the country thought he was a sandwich short of a picnic, or he had a roo loose in his top paddock… or he was just plain crazy!
Here’s one he used… “You can’t sit on a fence, a barbed wire fence at that, and have one ear to the ground.” What does that even mean??
So make sure your meaning is clear… Crystal Clear 😉
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